We’ve discovered the ‘true’ Chinese markets. Up to now, we’ve been shuttled to the ‘Better Life Mall’ which is a large department store with a big supermarket adjacent. It has a KFC so we treat the girls to chicken and fries twice a week. A meal for 4 of us there costs about 100 yuan, or $15, three or four times more than any other meals. There is a price to pay for North American things here. Similarly, a bottle of nail polish is 70 yuan ($10), pricey considering the translators here only make 1000 yuan ($150) a month. I did the math, and it would be like a $200 bottle of nail polish to us, based on a $3000/month salary.
So we found where the Chinese shop.

This is the entrance to the open air market, with food on one side and household goods on the other side. The food is as fresh as it gets…live (or recently dead). The girls love looking around at the frogs, eels, fish, chickens, geese, ducks, and pigeons. I’ve fielded some interesting questions lately about the origins of our food. Yesterday they were eating chicken drumsticks and asked if it was from a chicken. We explained that it was, indeed, a chicken leg. To this, Maddie replied, “But the chicken will be lonely for it’s leg!”. I then had to explain that the chicken was already dead and probably not missing much at all.
Here is Emily with some frogs, and those are eels in the bucket behind her.